Chapter Forty-Nine
Kyan
KYAN COULD BARELY FORM A THOUGHT.
‘Brother?’ Nicole breathed.
‘That’s not possible,’ he found himself saying.
‘Aye, it is,’ the Druid said, walking closer. A smile toyed with her lips, and her eyes raked over his face, as if seeing him for the first time. There was a flicker there – of pride? Pain? It was gone just as quickly. ‘But you’re suspicious. That’s good.’
Her accent was subtle, but then it was likely she’d had to hide or suppress it her whole life for fear of being discovered.
Nicole stepped up onto the ruins beside him as the Druid stood across, the dolmen separating them like a war table.
Beyond were glimpses of the Druid city, sprawled through the trees. Ruined stone monuments, great tree-crafted temples, a civilisation lost to time, its great artworks overgrown.
‘You’re telling me, you’re related?’ Nicole asked. ‘By blood?’
‘We share the same mother. Deichtine of Ulster. High Druid and sister to King Conchobar.’
Pain lanced through Kyan’s gut, his chest.
It couldn’t be true. They were dead. All of them. He’d seen it.
But he analysed her and, now she’d said it … he could see pieces of his mother in her. She didn’t have the same dark hair, but she had the singular freckle below her left eye that he’d forgotten. Even the forest-coloured eyes they shared.
Gods – they were tiny details, but they made his mother feel alive again, even if this girl’s features were sharper, her energy more daring.
Sister.
He gripped Nicole’s waist, both for his own sanity and so he was ready to move her out of harm’s way. Her hand came up to his reassuringly.
‘So, you’re the girl from Estwood’s woods,’ the Druid said to Nicole. ‘Failinis told me he liked you.’
Warning bells pealed through Kyan’s mind as Nicole stiffened. ‘Who is—’
The wolfhound jogged past them to sit beside the Druid. She stroked its head with sure, pale fingers.
‘He watched over you while you were there, though he spent more time lazing in the pub disguised as a much smaller dog than he did fighting creatures, didn’t you?
’ The dog’s large, intelligent eyes set on Kyan.
‘Did you think so few creatures came to your town by fluke? Failinis scared off a fair few from entering the boundaries whenever I was … indisposed.’
Kyan felt silent as a standing stone and just as rigid.
He had a sister.
A little girl who’d been left, perhaps for dead, amid the bodies of his people.
‘If you’re one of them, how did you survive?’ His question was quiet.
The Druid smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘When the Druids realised someone – something – was coming for them, they knew they had a limited amount of time. So they funnelled the rest of their collective magic into me, and the creatures of the forest helped me escape.’
‘And the Romans?’ Kyan asked. ‘Later, in Anglesey?’
‘What did you think? We all just upped and died? No. No matter how the Romans tried to massacre us, they did not succeed. At least – they didn’t get every last one.’
No. She was the last one.
Kyan felt his head start to shake. ‘When were you born? I came back before she died, I would have known—’
‘I was born when you were away. I was … unusually conceived, so I was kept a secret.’
Was it possible? That he had a sister and she’d been transformed by the unimaginable weight of an epic magic, and fled when he wasn’t far behind?
The thought was a blade, driven into his stomach and twisted.
‘Prove it,’ Nicole said.
The Druid didn’t get defensive. Instead, she smiled slightly as if their reactions reminded her of something; pleased her.
‘What do you want to know? How our mother could enchant a horse from twenty paces? That she had a few threads of purest silver in her hair? I’m not sure you would have seen them by the time you came back from training. ’
‘I saw her,’ he said, his voice rough, tight.
‘How about your bracelet? Where do you think you got it from?’ She nodded with her chin to the rope-like bracelet he’d worn for as long as he could remember.
It was woven leather around a torc-like band of gold, and something rebelled in him every time he took it off, encouraging him to put it back on as soon as he could.
When he’d tried to remember the provenance of it, he could never recall.
‘Scáthach gave that to you as a protective charm.’ There was a fraction of vulnerability in her eyes then, but she seemed to gloss over it, the long white hair down her back shifting.
He frowned. If it was true, why would she have made him forget?
The more important question was, ‘If you’ve known who I am and where I’ve been, why are you telling me this now?’ Kyan asked.
A weariness ghosted through her eyes as another smile did her mouth. ‘Why now, brother? Because a war is upon us. And not only are you two at the crux of it, but so am I, and so is your Siren friend—’
‘How do you know about Remi?’ Nicole cut in.
‘Oh, I know a great deal about her and her family. They come from ancient stock, and they are just as valuable to the Wake as I am, and as you two are. As for why now, you tell me.’
‘The Wake are hunting you,’ Kyan said.
She made a thoughtful noise. ‘They’ve always been hunting me.’
‘Do they know who you’re supposed to be?’
Her eyes shaded with understanding. ‘I don’t know. I don’t see how. They just know I’m one of the last of our people, which is cruel enough. If they knew I was your sister …’
If they knew, then it was one more piece of evidence that the Wake didn’t care about him as a person, nor the fate of the world. They wanted power, and they’d got it.
By any means necessary.
They’d offered him a mission that meant he’d have killed his own sister and not realised.
‘That, however,’ the Druid said, ‘is not what I need to talk to you about.’
He felt Nicole tense in anticipation of worse news. What other ridiculous thing—
‘What do you know about the Wake, now?’ the Druid asked.
Nicole flicked a wary glance up at him.
‘The Wake aren’t creatures, nor powerful humans,’ he said.
The Druid nodded as if waiting for more. When they didn’t give it, she continued, ‘They’re the same beings that have been around long before our people, the ones who gave the order to have them massacred.
‘They’re the enemies of our Old Gods.
‘They’re the Fomóiri, Kyan.
‘The ruling leaders of the Wake are the Demon Gods of our ancient world.’